by Steve Berry
Europol investigators quickly established a link to Franz Fellner. Documents at both Castle Loukov and Burg Herz confirmed the activities of the Retrievers of Lost Antiquities. With no heirs left to assume control of the Fellner estate, the German government intervened. Fellner’s private collection was eventually located, and it took only a few more days for investigators to learn the identity of the remaining club members. Their estates were raided under guidance from Europol’s art theft division.
The cache was enormous.
Sculptures, carvings, jewelry, drawings, and paintings, particularly old masters thought lost forever. Billions of dollars in stolen treasure were retrieved virtually overnight. But since Acquisitors looted only what had already been stolen, many claims of ownership were muddy at best, nonexistent at worst. The number of both governmental and private claims filed in courts scattered across Europe rose quickly into the thousands. So many that eventually a political solution was fashioned by the EC Parliament utilizing the World Court as final arbitrator. One journalist covering the spectacle observed that it would probably take decades before all the legal haggling was completed, “lawyers the only real winners in the end.”
Interestingly, the Loring family’s duplication of the Amber Room was so precise that the reconstructed panels fit perfectly back into the lacunae at the Catherine Palace. The initial thought was to display the recovered amber elsewhere and allow the newly restored room to remain. But Russian purists strongly argued that the amber should be returned to its rightful home—the home Peter the Great would have intended—though in actuality Peter cared little for the panels, his daughter, Empress Elizabeth, being the one who actually commissioned the Russian version of the room. So within ninety days of its discovery, the original Amber Room panels once again adorned the first floor of the Catherine Palace.
The Russian government was so grateful that Paul, Rachel, the children, and McKoy were invited to the official unveiling and flown over at government expense. While there, Paul and Rachel decided to remarry in the Orthodox church. There’d been a little initial resistance, given they were divorced. But once the circumstances had been explained, and the fact that they were remarrying each other made clear, the Church agreed. It had been a lovely ceremony. One he would remember for the rest of his life.
Paul thanked the priest and stepped from the altar.
“That was nice,” McKoy said. “A good way to end all this shi—I mean, crap.”
Rachel smiled. “Children cramp your style?”
“Just my vocabulary.”
They started walking toward the front of the cathedral.
“The Cutler family off to Minsk?” McKoy asked.
Paul nodded. “One last thing to do, then home.”
Paul knew McKoy had come for the publicity, the Russian government grateful for the return of one of its most prized treasures. The big man had smiled and backslapped his way though the unveiling yesterday, enjoying the press attention. He’d even done the Larry King show live last evening by satellite, fielding questions from around the world.National Geographic was talking to him about a one-hour special on the Amber Room with a worldwide distribution, the money they’d mentioned enough to satisfy his investors and resolve any issue of litigation from the Stod dig.
They stopped at the main doors.
“You two take care of yourself,” McKoy said. He motioned to the children. “And them.”
Rachel kissed him on the cheek. “Did I ever thank you for what you did?”
“You’d have done the same for me.”
“Probably not.”
McKoy smiled. “Any time, Your Honor.”
Paul shook McKoy’s hand. “Keep in touch, okay?”
“Oh, I’ll probably need your services again before long.”
“Not another dig?” Paul said.
McKoy shrugged. “Who knows? Still lots of shi—stuff—out there to find.”
The train left St. Petersburg two hours later, the journey south to Belarus a five-hour ride through dense forests and sloping fields of blue flax. Autumn had arrived, and the leaves had surrendered to the chill in bursts of red, orange, and yellow.
Russian officials had intervened with Belarussian authorities to make everything possible. Karol and Maya Borya’s caskets had arrived the day before, flown over by special arrangement. Rachel knew that her father wanted to be buried back in his homeland, but she wanted her parents together. Now they would be, in Belarussian soil, forever.
The caskets were waiting at the Minsk train station. They were then trucked to a lovely cemetery forty kilometers west of the capital, as near as possible to where Karol and Maya Borya had been born. The Cutler family followed the flatbed in a rental car, a United States envoy with them to make sure everything went smoothly.
The patriarch of Belarus himself presided at the private reburial, Rachel, Paul, Marla, and Brent standing together as solemn words were said. A light breeze eased across brown grass as the coffins were lowered into the ground.
“Say good-bye to your papa and nana,” Rachel told the children.
She handed each a sliver of blue flax. The children stepped to the open graves and tossed down the buds. Paul came close and held her. Her eyes teared. She noticed that Paul’s were watery, too. They’d never spoken about what happened that night in Castle Loukov. Thankfully, Knoll had never finished what he started. Paul risked his life to stop him. She loved her husband. The priest this morning cautioned them both that marriage was for life, something to be taken seriously, especially with children involved. And he was right. Of that she was sure.
She approached the graves. She’d said good-bye to her mother nearly a quarter century ago.
“Bye, Daddy.”
Paul stood behind her. “Good-bye, Karol. Rest in peace.”
They stood for a little while in silence, then thanked the patriarch and started for the car. A hawk soared overhead in the clear afternoon. A breeze rolled past them, neutralizing the sun. The children trotted ahead toward the gate.
“Back to work, huh?” she said to Paul.
“Time to get reacquainted with real life.”
She’d won reelection in July, though she’d done almost no campaigning, the aftermath and attention from the recovery of the Amber Room springboarding a victory over two opponents. Marcus Nettles had been crushed, but she’d made a point to visit the cantankerous lawyer and make peace, part of her new attitude of reconciliation.
“You think I ought to stay on the bench?” she asked.
“That’s your call, not mine.”
“I was thinking maybe it’s not such a good idea. It takes too much of my attention.”
“You have to do what makes you happy,” Paul said.
“I used to think being a judge made me happy. But I’m not so sure anymore.”
“I know a firm that would love to have an ex–superior court judge in its litigation department.”
“And that wouldn’t be Pridgen and Woodworth, would it?”
“Maybe. I have some pull there, you know.”
She wrapped her arm around his waist as they continued to walk. It felt good to be near him. For a few moments they strolled in silence and she savored her contentment. She thought about her future, the children, and Paul. Practicing law again might be just the thing for them all. Pridgen & Woodworth would be an excellent place to work. She looked over at Paul and heard again what he’d just said.
“I have some pull there, you know.”
So she hugged him hard and, for once, didn’t argue.
WRITER’S NOTE
In researching this novel I traveled throughout Germany, to Austria and Mauthausen concentration camp, then finally to Moscow and St. Petersburg where I spent several days at the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. Of course, the primary goal of a novel is to entertain, but I also wanted to accurately inform. The subject of the Amber Room is relatively unexplored in this country, though the Internet has recently started to fill that void. I
n Europe, the artifact holds an endless fascination. Since I do not speak German or Russian, I was forced to rely on English-version accounts of what may or may not have happened. Unfortunately, a careful study of those reports reveals conflicts in the facts. The consistent points are presented within the course of the narrative. The inconsistent details were either disregarded or modified to suit my fictional needs.
A few specific items: Prisoners at Mauthausen were tortured in the manner depicted. However, Hermann Göring never appeared there. Göring and Hitler’s personal competition for looted art is well documented, as is Göring’s obsession with the Amber Room, though there is no evidence he ever attempted to actually possess it. The Soviet commission for which Karol Borya and Danya Chapaev supposedly worked was real and actively sought looted Russian art for years after the war, the Amber Room at the top of its wanted list. Some say there is, in fact, a curse of the Amber Room, as several have died (as detailed in chapter 41) in the search—whether by coincidence or conspiracy is unknown. The Harz Mountains were extensively used by the Nazis to hide plunder, and the information described in chapter 42 is accurate, including the tombs found. The town of Stod is fictional, but the location, along with the abbey that overlooks it, is based on Melk in Austria, a truly impressive place. All the stolen art detailed at various points in the story is real and remains among the missing. Finally, the speculation, history, and contradictions about what may have happened to the Amber Room noted in chapters 13, 14, 28, 41, 44, and 48, including a possible Czech connection, are based on actual reports, though my resolution of the mystery is fictional.
The Amber Room’s disappearance in 1944 was a tremendous loss. At present, the room is being restored at the Catherine Palace by modern-day artisans who are laboring to re-create, panel by panel, magnificent walls crafted entirely of amber. I was fortunate to spend a few hours with the chief restorer, who showed me the difficulty of the endeavor. Luckily, the Soviets photographed the room in the late 1930s, planning on a restoration in the 1940s—but of course, war interfered. Those black-and-white images now act as a map for the re-creation of what was first fashioned more than 250 years ago.
The chief restorer also provided me with his insight into what may have happened to the original panels. He believed, as many others do (and as postulated in chapter 51), that the amber was either totally destroyed in the war or, like gold and other precious metals and jewels, the amber itself commanded the greatest market worth. It was simply found and sold off piece by piece, the sum of its parts far greater in value than the whole. Like gold, amber can be reshaped, leaving no trace of its former configuration, so it is possible that jewelry and other amber objects sold throughout the world today may contain amber from that original room.
But, who knows?
As Robert Browning was quoted saying in the narrative:Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished.
How true.
And how sad.
